For a long time I’ve been irritated by TV commercials that make junk food look delicious and fail to reveal its real content. Fish and meat dripping with butter, sandwiches so thick the actors can hardly get their mouths around them — these pictures turn me off. The sales pitch for Domino’s Pizza boasts that it features fresh dough instead of frozen, but it never reveals what’s in either.

Lately I’ve been under the vague impression that other writers’ ideas were bouncing off my own and that I’ve been catching the deflections. For years I’ve been saying that women in baseball deserve much more media attention. Now other writers with much more clout than I have begun talking about women in athletics.

I’ve noticed something about myself: I’ve developed a lot of pride in my work. When I’m with others who are speaking of their activities, it’s often with seniors like me. Most of them have retired from work, and I like hearing what they have done in their work lives. During the conversation I often find the opportunity to report that, despite being 78 years old, “I’m still working.” I’m proud and happy that even at this age I’m able to continue actively with my lifelong devotion to the work I love.

In my dreams, time isn’t chronological. Events occur out of the usual order. For example, I’m being captured by the bogeyman, then he’s chasing me, and then I’m encountering him. In other dreams the second event opens the dream, then comes the third, then my brain goes back to formulate what must have happened first.